The WUWT Hotsheet for Wednesday October 16th 2013

Ioane Teitiota, 37, asked New Zealand’s High Court in Auckland to let him appeal a decision that refused him asylum on the grounds his claim fell short of the legal criteria, such as fear of persecution or threats to his life.

What does this perception of climate controversy reveal about our own understanding of the relationship between science and society, nature and culture, and more generally about our relationship to modernity? – LionelScotto D’Apollonia

The issue involves a case of sexual harassment for which the allegations are apparently not under dispute.

I won’t give the full play-by-play but apparently a popular editor at Scientific American named Bora Zivkovic met with a prospective author, Monica Byrne, and had an admittedly inappropriate conversation with her, all but propositioning her on the spot. Byrne’s account is here, Zivkovic’s apology here.

[comment by Van] Bora’s behavior, all denial to the contrary, appears to be a pattern, once again (and it usually is in these cases)–he approached multiple women in the same manner. Moreover, he was in a position of authority over the women who have come forward, determining if they would be able to write for SciAm. SciAm swept the behavior under the rug with a private apology, and then allowed him to stay in that position of authority. Inexcusable, and again, part of the typical pattern.

Just watch, the climateers will collectively try to rehabilitate this guy’s reputation just like what was done with document thief Peter Gleick.

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Coal surging:

Coal will become more in demand than oil by 2020 driven by growth in China and India, despite campaigns to reduce carbon emissions across the globe, a new report reveals. Marking a return to an era reminiscent of Britain’s industrial revolution, the rapidly expanding economies in the East are turning to coal since it is cheaper and more reliable than oil or renewable energy sources, energy consultancy firm Wood Mackenzie said on Monday. –Helen Collis, Daily Mail, 14 October 2013

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The Polar Express is Leaving the Station

This has been a record cold summer in Alabama, and we had cool fronts pass through regularly all summer long. I don’t recall that ever happening in the 30 years we have lived here. The lawn stayed spring-green all summer, when usually we have to work to keep it alive.

And what are the big takeaway lessons in all of this? A key one is that apparently no one, and particularly not IPCC, can be trusted to tell us what turn the climate will take next, or in which direction. Don’t buy a used car from anyone who tells you that they are certain, and for sure, don’t trust them when their past performance proves otherwise.

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Fewest US Forest Fires In Three Decades

The fire season is probably over, with no large fires burning and below normal temperatures in the west. The US had less than 40,000 fires this year – the smallest number since 1984.

In 1938, the US had more than four times as many fires as 2013 – source

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Australia Releases Carbon Repeal Legislation

The Australian’s Coalition Government has said that scrapping the carbon tax will leave the average household approximately AUD550 (USD521) better off in 2014-15.

The new Government had pledged that its first parliamentary act of business would be to introduce repeal legislation. This has now been released for public consultation.

The bills remove the carbon tax, end the carbon tax on fuels used in shipping, rail and air transport, and on synthetic greenhouse gases. The Climate Change Authority will be abolished, and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission will be given further powers to take action against businesses engaging in post-repeal “price exploitation.”

Unveiling the draft legislation, the Environment Minister Greg Hunt stressed that businesses and manufacturers will see their compliance costs fall by AUD100m a year, while the economy overall will receive a boost, employment will go up, and cost of living pressures will be eased. Around 440 pages of legislation will be axed.

Germany’s power grid operators boosted the surcharge consumers pay for renewable energy by 18 percent to a record, adding to pressure on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government to act against rising electricity bills.
The four grid companies set the fee paid through power bills at 6.24 euro cents (8.42 U.S. cents) a kilowatt-hour next year from 5.28 euro cents now, according to a statement on the website of TransnetBW. The charge has more than quintupled since 2009, helping to make German household power bills the third-highest in the European Union. Big industrial users are largely exempt from the fee.

26 thoughts on “The WUWT Hotsheet for Wednesday October 16th 2013”

This has been a record cold summer in Alabama, and we had cool fronts pass through regularly all summer long. I don’t recall that ever happening in the 30 years we have lived here. The lawn stayed spring-green all summer, when usually we have to work to keep it alive.

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Sounds like a “change” to me.
Let’s shut down all the power plants in Alabama. That should keep your lawn brown.
Keeping lawns brown by going green. Change you can believe in!

Regarding Tuvalu: First of all, sea level rise is too small to notice. Second of all, house-boats, anyone? Millions of people in this world live in house-boats—Hong Kong, Indonesia quickly come to mind. Even in the SanFrancisco Bay Area, some people actually LIKE living in house-boats. So consider house-boats for adaptation in Tuvalu??

I was required to take some training this Summer, in preparation for legal changes which took place in the State I live in (one of the lower 48). It seems that the legislature changed the standard of “sexual harassment” from being a ‘pattern of behaviors’ to a SINGLE INSTANCE in the mind of the victim. The perp will typically be placed on some type of leave, and regardless of the results of the investigation, the offending party will be dismissed.

The workplace keeps getting weirder and weirder — — must be all of that global warming, frying people’s brains … … …

There’s a revealing line in the Coal Surging article that shows the author has no idea what she’s writing about: “the rapidly expanding economies in the East are turning to coal since it is cheaper and more reliable than oil or renewable energy sources….” Few here would disagree that coal is cheaper and more reliable than renewable energy sources. But except in the rare instance of an ancient oil-fired power plant being retired, no one is actually turning from oil to coal, since nowadays they’re used for completely different purposes – coal to burn in power plants to produce electricity and oil to make gasoline, jet fuel, heating oil and diesel. What’s actually happening is that the rapidly expanding economies in the East are building new power plants right and left and burning even more coal than they did before. They’re also consuming more oil than before for their rapidly expanding vehicle fleets. It’s as if the author happened to notice that total hot dog sales were greater than sales of 2x4s and concluded that people are turning from 2x4s to hot dogs. But that’s mass media journalism today.

What’s actually happening is that the rapidly expanding economies in the East are building new power plants right and left and burning even more coal than they did before. They’re also consuming more oil than before for their rapidly expanding vehicle fleets.

Yes, and they are choosing to mostly adopt coal as the fuel and technology of choice when building those “new power plants” so they are “burning even more coal than they did before”.

They could have chosen oil or gas for those “new power plants” but they have mostly turned from those options to adopting use of more coal for electricity generation. The result is that the percentage of energy supplied by coal is increasing despite “their rapidly expanding vehicle fleets” which are fueled by oil products.

Mark,
I understand what you are saying. Unfortunately we live in an age where ‘victimhood’ is celebrated, and crimes are not defined by legislative bodies but by wanna-be victims. Victim hood is just another way to feed at the public trough.

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It must be dry ice. Since CO2 is now known to be able to cause not only “Global Warming” but also “Climate Change”, any cooling must be CO2.
CO2. The miracle molecule. We can blame it for anything!

Ioane Teitiota, 37, asked New Zealand’s High Court in Auckland to let him appeal a decision that refused him asylum on the grounds his claim fell short of the legal criteria, such as fear of persecution or threats to his life.

Other reports from back in early October (like this one) mention that he is seeking to become the ‘world’s first climate refugee‘. By another sheer coincidence I was trying to find out who the world’s first climate refugees are / were and compiling one of my lists.

Below are the world’s first climate refugees. :-)

The West Australian – 24 November 1954Canada Will Shift Arctic Dwellers
Canada’s largest Arctic community, threatened with sinking through melting permafrost terrain at Aklavik, 70 miles south of the Arctic Ocean, will be moved to a new location.
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United Nations Environment Programme – 6 December 2005Pacific Island Villagers First Climate Change “Refugees”
A small community living in the Pacfic island chain of Vanuatu has become one of, if not the first, to be formally moved out of harms way as a result of climate change. The villagers have been relocated higher into the interior of Tegua,……
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Washington Post – 20 August 2006
Last week, environmentalist Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, released a report that called the quarter of a million Katrina evacuees who will not return home “the world’s first climate refugees.”
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gogreen
The Bhola Islanders have been described as some of the world’s first climate refugees. In 2007, a Bangladeshi scientist stated: “We’re already seeing hundreds of thousands of climate refugees moving into slums in Dhaka.”

Chicago Tribune – 2 May 2007
The first refugees of global warming
Bangladesh watches in horror as much of the nation gives way to sea
On Bangladesh‘s southern coast, erosion driven in part by accelerating glacier melt and unusually intense rains already has scoured away half of Bhola Island, which once covered an area nearly 20 times the size of Chicago. Land disputes, many driven by erosion, now account for 77 percent of Bangladesh’s legal suits.
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BBC Archive – 30 October 2008Carterets Islanders have become the world’s first climate change refugees, according to a recent United Nations report. The 1500 residents of Carteret Islands…

Guardian – 25 November 2005
Pacific Atlantis: first climate change refugees
In the week before 150 countries meet in Montreal to discuss how to combat global warming and rising sea levels, the Carterets’ people became the first to be officially evacuated because of climate change.
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The Nation – 30 March 2008
According to the geologist Sugata Hazra, who is the director of the School of Oceanography Studies at Kolkata’s Jadavpur University, the people of the Sundarbans are the first global-warming refugees. He said: ‘These people are victims of global warming. The accelerated melt of the Himalayan glacier…

the-south-asian Life & Times – April – June 2009
Rising sea-levels are already beginning to flood many of the small islands within the Sundarbans – creating thereby the world’s first climate change refugees.
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Inside Climate News – 15 June 2009Kivalina, a small Inupiat village in northwestern Alaska, is being forced to relocate. Its 400 residents will shortly become some of the world’s first climate refugees.
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Mother Jones – November/December 2009 Issue
Meet the people of Tuvalu, the world’s first climate refugees.

I notice that Southern Hemisphere Sea Ice Area has been stuck in September – what’s up with that?
Also the Arctic Ice Extent, NORSEX SSM/I is stuck in Sept. – WUWT?
Satellite shut-down due to government shutdown?

I’ve noticed before but never found any discussion about it – Tuvalu’s sea level went down dramatically beginning in 1997 and then back up again by the end of 1999 precisely at the same time as the super El Nino back then. It seemed to have happened again but less in 2010.

Is it possible that that whole region of earth slowly heaved upwards, (~12″!), including the ocean floor,(magma “tide” but much slower maybe from changes in gravity from relative planetary alignments? Jupiter? ~11 years?), creating a strong deep current that is somehow related to the ENSO?

Mike M. Why would you need the magma tide? The Pacific current away from the planet’s rotation along the equator. The water flowing from South America, “downhill” from the rising sun, meets no resistance until it splashes into Tuvalu. Then it gets back up a little. It’s a law of plumbing.

Bora Zivkovic is the Blog Editor at Scientific American, chronobiologist, biology teacher, organizer of ScienceOnline conferences and editor of Open Laboratory anthologies of best science writing on the Web.

My guess is, based on my knowledge of the New Zealand immigration system and these sorts of, temporary, workers (To be honest, and IMO, it is a rather rough deal for them, but the spin off is work and income they would not ordinarily have access to), even though he has his life there in NZ, family etc, he has been asked by the NZ immigration service to leave. Either his current visa has expired, he is an “illegal” over-stayer or he simply does not meet any other general migrant criteria and thus would not be granted a visa to remain in NZ. Knowing what I know about the legal system in NZ, clearly, the lawyer sees he can make some money out of any compensation Ioane Teitiota may be awarded if the case is successful. In an interview Mr. Ioane Teitiota stated that his island was sinking. Only the reporters were talking about SLR.

When science research of any kind is done to prove a certain viewpoint it isn’t science at all, it’s opinion. Climate research both proving and disproving human influenced climate change is full of data manipulation and outright lies. When consensus is the basis for scientific fact then those facts are guaranteed to be wrong.